Sunday, December 29, 2013

I find it interesting when I see how other bloggers store or display their polish collections and those that are able to display theirs often arrange them by color, like my sister although she sticks with OPI and China Glaze.

I live in a smaller apartment and all available wall space is already being used so mine are stored in Sterilite shoebox drawers, purchased as necessary from my local Dollar General. As floor space is also at a premium, they are stacked fairly high, 9 to a column.

The first column is all store bought polish, all keepers, those I won't franken with, except the top drawer where I store bases and topcoats. The second column is also store bought polish, two more drawers for "keepers", and the rest of drawers are for the duplicates bought for that reason. The final column are my own creations except for the top and bottom drawers which hold my empty bottles and those that need to be cleaned before reusing.

Even with each drawer neatly labelled by brand or line I still often misplace bottles and overlook the same one over and over because all I see looking into the drawer are caps which would be fine if polish names were on top but mine are not. Then I hit upon an idea and spent a few days marking the tops with the polish in the bottle. Obviously you can't use the brush to paint the cap so I painted my finger instead and did it that way.

And now when I pull out one of those drawers, most of the time I find what I am looking for.

Friday, December 27, 2013

I have several new posts coming but since there is very little blog coverage about how the newer Shimmer Pops from TKB Trading compare to their original Pops! collection, I decided I would start with that.I haven't posted in months because frankening simply wasn't that interesting to me any more; it just didn't seem like there was a color direction I could go that I hadn't already played with and maxed out. Part of the reason for that was that I owned all the pigments from TKB Trading, The Conservatorie and Coastal Scents I found even remotely appealing and my other option, mixing new color recipes, is more frustrating than enjoyable. Out of extreme boredom one afternoon, I did finally make some "small batch" recipes, just enough to make a bottle of polish or two, without using any of the Pops! Collections because it was discontinued and my own supply limited. No pun intended but most of them seemed to lack "pop", not enough sharpness or vibrancy in the color so I decided to add the Shimmer Pops samples to my TKB Trading Christmas-present-order when I couldn't find any comparisons online.When I did my comparison, I took two sets of photos, one in daylight and the second under my Ott light. Several of these may be blurry because my camera likes to give me the shaking camera symbol any time I don't use a tripod but you'll get the idea.

That concludes the picture tour and I hope everyone finds it helpful. I should add that TKB Trading does not say that these are intended to be a replacement for the Pops! and also, the Shimmer Pops are marked as "ready to wear" while I don't believe the Pops! were.

TKB's Shimmer Pops are sold as a 6g each sample set for $8.10, a one ounce set for $25.00. They can also be purchased as individual pigments. They are $1.50 for a 6g sample or $4.95 an ounce.

Eventually I'll order The Conservatorie's Happy Hour Collection as samples to compare those too but you can't buy everything at once! -MK

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Believe it or not, I do come around here once in a while although I quickly become bored when I do. Just the same, I've made some effort to update prices, having gotten done every entry with the $$$ tag but haven't gotten to the pages yet.

Some dead links have been removed or updated where applicable. That's still a work in progress. Today, 12/12/13, I worked all day and fixed links on all but a few entries. Pages will be next.

I found some new suppliers for suspension base (new to me anyway) and listed those on the Suspension Base Suppliers page. I'm amazed at how many there seems to be now.

I've trolled the internet for one of my favorite things- duochrome pigments- and listed the suppliers I found on the Automotive Suppliers page, a couple others on Color Shifting Pigments (Part 3) and (Part 2)

I also fixed my Franken Book, going back to the original version which seems to function just fine as long as I don't update it.

During my absence, I've also made countless color recipes but since most of them are more impressive in dry form and less so in polish, I haven't decided whether I should post them. I must say I find it a bit more difficult without using any of TKB Trading's discontinued Pops pigments.

Speaking of TKB Trading, for my Christmas present from hubby, one of the things I ordered from them was a sample set of the Shimmer Pops, their "ready to wear" pigments so I'll then be able to visually compare them to the Pops and show them to you. Along with that, I also ordered some of their Luminette bottles so I'll have those to show you as well.

I've also discovered I'm no longer notified via email about comments made so I've missed out and not replied on quite a few- my apologies to those of you that left one.

Until you hear from me again, everyone have a happy and safe holiday season -MK